For Science!

What I Wore to Work Today: Wednesday, October 24, 2012Dress: RossBelt: Random gift from my momShoes: Payless

I was rummaging through my closet last week trying to decide what to wear to a party where we drank cheap vodka for science and I came across this stretchy gold belt. My mother had sent to it me awhile ago, maybe even last year, and I had never worn it. I was surprised I hadn’t given it away already, actually. I tried it on and thought Huh, maybe I could make that work, and later I wore it to the office.

So about that party For Science. A friend needed assistance calibrating the dosages for his dissertation’s alcohol lab. His research focuses on the speed at which a person reaches peak blood alcohol content and how that rate correlates with different things. One example hypothesis: the faster BAC peaks and begins to fall again, the greater the risk of alcohol abuse.

Each subject was weighed and given a corresponding number of pretzels to eat as quickly as possible. (This part of Science wasn’t a ton of fun.) Then, we were given our alcohol dose to drink within 10 minutes, again based on weight/height/age/sex. Form there we were breathalyzed every 10 minutes until the BAC started to drop again (usually in the .04-.09 window, the Drinking For Science wasn’t a total bender or anything). Turns out the meters couldn’t handle the number of people — there wasn’t enough time for them to reset between readings — and started malfunctioning after awhile. Even though there wasn’t a much usable data for his research, it was a fun night.